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NY Daily News — State officials must draw new district lines that give growing Queens immigrant groups a stronger voice, advocates demanded this week during a nearly six-hour public hearing.

A joint Senate-Assembly body that oversees redistricting has held public sessions throughout New York since July – and the meeting Wednesday in Queens drew one of the largest crowds in the state.

“There’s a constant need to pay attention to new immigrant enclaves,” said state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria), who testified at the hearing. “It’s our obligation to do what we can to integrate them into society and into government, and the best way to do that … is to unite them as a community of interest.”

States across the country are preparing to redraw district lines based on Census 2010 data. At Queens Borough Hall, nearly 100 speakers asked the state to avoid gerrymandering politics and instead use the demographic statistics to draw boundaries.

“The Asian-American community spoke together with one voice,” said Jerry Vattamala, a staff attorney with the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which is part of a coalition of local Asian groups advocating for fair redistricting. “We suffered for 10 years with current district lines. It would be unbearable to suffer another 10.”

In Queens, which the Census Bureau tallied at around 2.2 million, growing Asian populations have been fractured, making it difficult for them to get the attention they need, advocates said.

“We’re supposed to have a system where voters choose representatives, not one where representatives choose their voters,” said Gianaris.

The government watchdog group Common Cause is crunching numbers to make its own recommendations for district lines.

“There have been some substantial shifts in the demographic picture of Queens over the last 10 years,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause/NY. “That really should require significant adjustments.”

The Asian population in New York has grown 36% since 2000, said James Hong, of the Flushing-based MinKwon Center for Community Action, which is spearheading the newly formed Asian-American Community Coalition on Redistricting and Democracy.

Residents need more opportunities to have their voices heard, he said.

The state has done extensive outreach for the hearings, said a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office.

After these public sessions end in October, the state will draw maps and launch a second round of hearings, though there is not yet a specific timeline.

Elizabeth OuYang, president of the New York chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans, said she hopes to meet with state officials after multiple letters she wrote to the task force went unanswered.

“It was very disheartening,” she said. “This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, meaningful access.”

Sam Levin, New York Daily News

This post originally appeared at the New York Daily News. Image credit: missmeng/Flickr